Call for urgent action amid hendra virus spike

A horse at Chinchilla became the latest horse to die from the virus on Friday

7pm TV News QLD

A veterinarian says time is running out to determine the cause of so many hendra virus outbreaks across Queensland.

A horse in Chinchilla on southern Queensland's Western Downs became the latest horse to die from the virus on Friday, and is the first case of the disease west of the Great Dividing Range.

The latest outbreak has placed added pressure on the resources of Queensland Health and Biosecurity Queensland.

The horse at Chinchilla died on Friday and authorities have quarantined the property and mobilised teams to investigate who had contact with the sick animal.

Ten horses have died in eight locations across Queensland, 87 are being monitored, and up to 60 people have been tested since the first outbreak last month.

Vet Dr David Lovell, from Redland Bay, east of Brisbane, says the State Government needs to allocate more resources to studying the reasons behind the spike in outbreaks.

"Something's different, something has changed," he said.

"My belief probably is that it is all in the month of July - I think that in a very, very short period of time we have had all these different outbreaks.

"Why is that suddenly happening?

"It has never ever been like that before and it's just essential that we know."

Dr Lovell says Biosecurity Queensland needs all the help it can get to figure it out.

"They are probably stretched to their limits a little bit now - I would like to see it outsourced," he said.

"AusVet - their speciality is epidemiology - that is what they do and they have done some brilliant work over the years.

"I am sure the CSIRO there are lots and lots of people that aren't directly on the Government payroll at the moment that I think could be given this as an urgent, immediate project to get out there and find out."

'Under control'

"We don't believe there is any need to be taking further actions - this is under control," he said.

"There has been some concern about horse events but there is no need for those to not occur.

"There is no need to prevent horses from moving around - it will not add value to the situation in terms of managing it."

He says the infected horse at Chinchilla died in the care of a private practitioner.

"That quarantine period will go for approximately 30 days - a little bit longer than a month - where we will do three rounds of testing of other horses on the site," Dr Thompson said.

"We believe there are four other horses on the site.

"[We're] tracing in ... at this point to try and determine what other contacts there has been in that area."

Western Downs Mayor Ray Brown says work must continue to stop the spread of hendra virus from bats to horses.

Mr Brown says flying fox colonies are widespread on the Western Downs.

"Personally I know myself - where I live at Moonie, I have pecan nut tree that they love to attack," he said.

"It's just part of nature in Queensland - how we deal with it is certainly an issue that's got to be addressed.

"We don't want more frequencies of this type of event."

'Promising signs'

Meanwhile, the state's chief health officer Dr Jeannette Young says despite the high number of hendra virus outbreaks this year, the signs are promising for those who have had contact with the sick horses.

"We have been testing people in Queensland who have had contact with horses and we are starting to see the second lot of tests coming back and all of those tests have come back negative, as we would expect," she said.

"We don't have concerns because if it was going to come back positive, people would have had an illness.

"We would have tested them at the time of the illness and no-one has had a illness related to this at all, so we don't expect any of those tests to come back positive."